The Death of Dating

How come no one dates anymore?

Let's take a look at our first culprit: The Hand Warmer. Yes, that's right, the hand warmer. In times of yore, one required a significant other to keep their hands warm. Want to take a cold autumn stroll around the block? Naturally, you'll require your significant other to join you so that your hands can stay warmly interlocked with theirs. But now that hand warmers have been invented, the winter ritual of finding a temporary or long-term mate to share the cold damp dark months with is less necessary. Therefore we can consider a hand warmer as a single life enabler. 

But on a more serious note: Why don't people date as often? Seems like most people my age (myself being a prime example) don't date casually, or seriously as previous generations did. 
Perhaps it's because we're looking back at all the broken homes and disastrous marriages of our parents, grandparents, etc? Certainly, anyone who witnesses a messy divorce either first or second hand becomes weary of marriage; wanting to avoid that fate for themselves. Allegedly divorce rates have dropped over the past 20 some years as shown here. But that could also reflect the fact that fewer people are getting married. 

Maybe it's because the modern young adult is far busier than ever before. Living is expensive these days. Here's a fun site to see how the price of things has changed. Certainly, inflation accounts for some of it, but also costs have been skewed greatly... the baby boomers got greedy. We've also been brainwashed into believing that to do anything in life you have to get a degree. Schooling is also more expensive nowadays. As a college student, it's difficult to find the time to do anything. If you do the math there are 168 hrs in a week. Full time at most Universities consists of taking 12 credit hrs which translates to spending 12 hrs in class, with a recommended study time of 3 hrs outside of class per every hour spent in class or 48 total hours of schooling per week. If by some miracle you have the time to get 8 hrs of sleep a night, there go another 56 hrs. Slap working part or full time on top of that and you're down another 20-40 hrs. Leaving you with 44-24 hrs remaining. Then slap on travel time, to those locations, and the recommended 30-60min daily of exercise and you're looking at roughly 15hrs of free time for those working full time. Still sounds like a decent amount, but add in church for most of us Utah folk and now there are 12hrs left before callings are factored in. The problem with those 12 hrs is that you can almost guarantee they'll be spread all over the place. Maybe you have an hour break between classes or a day with a few hours in the morning. Not very conducive for going on dates. Plus if you're like me, you'll likely want to spend most or all of those 12 hrs relaxing and catching your breath from the hectic mess that is the rest of your week. Maybe prefer spending it with friends, family, fun activities, or working on a hobby rather than trying to go on dates with new people that may end up being a waste of your time and money anyway.

As opposed to times of the past, women are also more independent in our modern age. I think this is absolutely a great thing, but it is also relevant to the death of dating. In the past, a woman's goal was to "find a good man, marry well, settle down, and raise children". That practice or mindset is certainly vanishing in western culture. For really the first time in history, women are encouraged to go out and find a career,  get an education, and follow their passions, rather than setting their sights on finding someone to "settle down with". I've met countless women of my parent's generation who admit they only went to college to find a husband. Though to some degree that still may be the case at BYU, it doesn't appear to be the norm these days. 

The Internet could be another key factor. Certainly, the physical ideal and expectation of beauty has changed. Our tastes and attractions have been trained to admire body types that aren't even real. Photoshopped muscles, waistlines, enlarged eyes, plastic surgery, and whatnot, that are found in ads which bombard the viewer from all corners of the internet, have skewed our concept of the human figure and natural beauty. Thus raising the bar for what we expect to find in a "perfect partner". We children of the internet tend to waste a lot of time scrolling, watching, stalking, reading, and amusing ourselves online too. But more so than wasting time, the internet has left us dry on how to communicate with others. Certainly "interactive or social sites" on the internet are not practical for having, or spawning a good or even romantic conversation. Social media is prime for bigoted arguments, bragging, vanity, and reacting to things that are likely none of your business. Let's get real: the people on social media that you actually care to talk to (with minor exceptions), you're going to text or call instead. So in many ways, we've been trained to react; not discuss or actually hold conversations of any intelligent value. React, Like, Comment, Gif,  insert Meme, move on.

I would group smartphones in with the internet, as that's largely what we use them for. Social media/game phones. The amount of time I use my phone for texting and talking on is minuscule. Sadly I know that I'm better than most. I don't spend a whole lot of time on my phone, and when I do, I try to keep it knowledge and learning oriented. But phones have really become a social crutch. If you're sitting around bored, rather than projecting out and seeing what's happening around, or who you could talk to, the blue screen magnet draws you in. Down the rabbit hole. Social interactions take much more effort than turning down the brain a few notches to absent-minded phone fidgeting. So why bother meeting someone new when an old friend is a text away. 

In another way, online dating has possibly and probably made dating easier. Get on, swipe and wait. Can't say I know much about the online dating scene though. I tried it once for approximately 12 minutes before deleting my account. Maybe it's my geographical location, pessimism, or just plain snobbishness, but everyone on there seemed to be the exact same. Straight off the BYU hipster press. Stamped out like clones. All the profiles I came across (not an exaggeration, literally 95%) were women who said they enjoy "Listening to Imagine Dragons, watching the most current trendy Netflix series, vacationing on the beach, eating at Cafe Rio, taking selfies, following the latest fashion trends, and flirting with meatheads at the gym". And for some reason they all want you to follow them on Instagram. Needless to say after my 12-minute adventure with no apparent change in any of the results, despite changing my settings, I realized it was not the place for me. I like a woman with class.
Though online dating has made setting updates with strangers who may have some common interests easier, it has made the traditional ways of asking people out more awkward. It seems almost impossible to walk up to a stranger, or someone you barely know and ask them on a date. Not because it's a particularly difficult task, but because it seems to be against some sort of invisible societal rule. It simply isn't done. You're a "creep" or a "weirdo" if you do, and the chances seem fairly slim of them agreeing to go. Sort of a hard situation to explain. Not sure if I'm doing it any justice. It's like having long hair or facial hair while being Mormon. There are no actual rules anywhere about it, but it still seems to be frowned upon by most members, even though Jesus and the vast majority of prophets throughout history would have had both long hair and a beard. Asking people out in person has nearly become a strange societal no-no like that. At least that's how I interpret the situation from my experiences and observations. 

The majority of college students I know go on roughly 4-6 dates a year (compare to an average of 4-6 dates a month in the 50's and other time periods). These days it seems like more and more of a chore to actually go on a date too, or at least that's how we seem to feel about it. Of course, there are always the outliers than go on a million dates a month thanks to Tinder or whatnot, but they seem to get stuck in the loop of always looking but never finding. I've also noticed a more common trend of people marrying their first significant other. Meaning first real boyfriend/girlfriend that they've really dated for an extended period of time. Certainly, my parents and their friends had many long-term dating relationships before they eventually found the one and settled down. But now it almost feels like you find someone you like, start seriously dating, and figure you like each other enough and don't want to go back to the dating scene, so you just get hitched. Hopefully I'm wrong and people aren't just getting married cause it's the thing to do and they don't want to date longer. If that trend actually is the case, things are going to get messy down the road. 

Be it screen addiction, the lack of time, lack of funds, unseen societal pressures, hesitancy due to past experiences, inability to converse, or otherwise, the decline of dating is real. 

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